Helena turns white. I know I’m probably being unfair, but the anger is a fire in me, and it swallows the apology on my lips whole.
That anger carries me. It keeps me anchored hard and fast to the world as I tell the same story again and again, to my siblings, to the cops, to assorted members of Phil’s family when they start arriving. ‘Phil came over,’ I repeat. ‘We’ve been fighting recently, for a lot of reasons, but we made up. We’d only just gone to bed when Disey called me.’
Phil sleeps until after midday. I guard the bedroom door fiercely, petrified that the pile of bloody clothes will somehow burst out from under the bed, a flashing neon sign screaming these are the killers.
But I can’t guard her when she finally wakes up, can’t protect her from the living room full of her family who all want to hug her and kiss her and tell her it’s okay, they’ll look after her. ‘It’s all right, Pippa,’ her aunt Efghenia says, wrapping her up in what must be the millionth hug of the day. ‘You won’t be alone. We’re here.’
‘I know,’ Phil says, her voice dull, dead.
Going down to the police station that afternoon is almost a relief in some ways, because at least it’s quiet there. They separate Phil and me to ask us questions, and I end up in the same room where Finn and I sat, in what feels like a hundred years ago, when we went searching for Marie and found her shoe at the old stables. But it’s Disey beside me this time, sitting in the cheap plastic chairs.
‘You’re underage, they can’t ask you questions without a guardian present,’ she says.
I’ve repeated the story so many times by this point that I’m almost comfortable with it, so I’m not prepared when one of the cops slides a photo across the table. ‘Do you know this woman?’
My breath catches. ‘I – um – maybe?’
Disey pulls her reading glasses out of her bag so she can look at it too. She swears under her breath.
‘Maybe?’ the cop asks.
‘Well – the photo quality isn’t that good,’ I hedge. ‘It could be anyone.’
It’s not a lie. It’s a grainy photo taken from a CCTV camera. I know which one, too – they put it up randomly near a block of public toilets on the nature reserve between the creek and the beach because they thought it would stop people doing drugs in there. We had a long discussion about it at a student leader meeting at school, and we decided it was a stupid idea, because how can you tell the difference between someone going into the toilets to pee and someone going in there to shoot up? We ended up writing a letter to the council about what a ridiculous waste of money it was.
If only councils took letters from high school student groups seriously. If only we’d actually taken that letter seriously, instead of filling it with the best zingers we could think of. If only we’d actually cared more about getting that stupid camera taken down instead of laughing about how bad the council’s logic was.
‘It’s Matilda Taufa,’ Disey says. ‘Her boss.’
‘Your boss?’ one of the cops says, in a tone that means, ‘Well, isn’t that interesting?’
The anger in me starts hardening into fear. ‘I work at OverWrought. Her shop. On Saturdays.’
‘How long have you worked there?’
‘A couple of months.’
Both cops jot something down on the paper in front of them.
‘But I know Matilda. She wouldn’t do this. She’s kind. She helps people.’
‘Pearlie,’ Disey says, ‘she’s carrying a body.’
‘She’s carrying a bag! I know it looks bad, but there could be anything in there. Maybe it’s – I don’t know, fishing gear!’
‘Is there any reason why Matilda Taufa would hold a grudge against Eleni Kostakidis?’
‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘They didn’t know each other.’
‘You can’t know that, Pearlie,’ Disey says gently.
‘Matilda didn’t do this. No way.’
‘You understand that we have to pursue all avenues of investigation,’ one of the cops says.
‘Then why aren’t you out there pursuing Jenny and Kel?’ I demand. ‘They’re the ones that killed Marie! And they tried to kill Phil once before! They’re the ones you should be –’
‘One of the neighbours reported seeing a car leaving the Kostakidis residence at about four in the morning,’ one of the cops says. They address themselves to Disey, obviously deciding that I’m too hysterical to be spoken to any more. ‘It matches the description of the car registered to Matilda.’
‘Another neighbour reported seeing a different car leave about an hour earlier,’ the other cop says. ‘A white one.’
Disey’s car is white.
They’re setting me up. This has been a slow play, and now they’re closing the net. They’re going to whip out another CCTV photo of Phil and me driving off, and a cage is going to descend from the ceiling and they’re going to lock me up and throw away the key.
‘But it’s all on-street parking there, so it’s tricky to know if a car is leaving a specific residence,’ the first cop says.
‘So it could all be a coincidence,’ I say. ‘This could all be a big coincidence, and you’re wasting your time on it instead of getting out there and searching for Jenny and Kel.’
‘They have to look into everything, okay?’ Disey says, reaching over and folding her fingers around mine.
‘It’s Jenny and Kel,’ I repeat. ‘It has to be Jenny and Kel.’
‘Pearlie,’ Disey says, then hesitates. ‘Pearlie, Jenny and Kel ate the people they killed. They didn’t just stab them and throw them away.’
‘Maybe they didn’t have time!’ I say. ‘Maybe whoever was in that white car, and the car that looks like Matilda’s, though you can’t prove it was Matilda’s, maybe they interrupted them. Maybe –’
‘We arrested Matilda Taufa an hour ago,’ the cop says.
The world stops.
‘What?’ I say faintly.
‘She had an unconscious man in her car,’ the cop goes on. ‘He appears to have sustained some quite serious injuries that match the ones suffered by Eleni Kostakidis.’
My thoughts feel slow and woolly, like someone’s set off a smoke machine in my brain, so I only put it together the split second before she tells us who the man was.
Hunter. Matilda went to find Hunter – Hunter, who I abandoned, bloody and unconscious in the bush – and she got arrested for murder.
They ask me more questions, and I answer them, but it’s like some other Pearl is operating my body, and I’m hovering outside it, an insubstantial presence in the air that could blow away in the mildest breeze.
I register a few things they say. They have Matilda in custody. She’s being held without bail. Hunter’s unconscious in hospital under police guard. No, I can’t see her. No, they strongly advise I don’t see him.
I register a few things they don’t say. Matilda is my boss. Hunter is my music teacher. Mrs Kostakidis is my best friend’s mother, and Marie was my friend, and every single time something terrible has happened in this town in the last six months, there’s been a link back to me.